Endocranial development in non-avian dinosaurs reveals an ontogenetic brain trajectory distinct from extant archosaurs.

Modern birds possess highly encephalized brains that evolved from non-avian dinosaurs. Evolutionary shifts in developmental timing, namely juvenilization of adult phenotypes, have been proposed as a driver of head evolution along the dinosaur-bird transition, including brain morphology. Testing this hypothesis requires a sufficient developmental sampling of brain morphology in non-avian dinosaurs.

A proxy for brain-to-endocranial cavity index in non-neornithean dinosaurs and other extinct archosaurs.

Although the brain fills nearly the entire cranial cavity in birds, it can occupy a small portion of it in crocodilians. The lack of data regarding the volumetric correspondence between the brain and the cranial cavity hampers thorough assessments of the degree of encephalization in non-neornithean dinosaurs and other extinct archosaurs and, consequently, informed inferences regarding their cognitive capacities. Existing data suggest that, across extant archosaurs, the degree of endocranial doming and the volume of intracranial nonneural components are inversely related.

Production of Sustainable Aviation Fuel by Hydrocracking of -Heptadecane Using Pt-Supported Y-Zeolite-AlO Composite Catalysts.

Hydrocracking of fat or Fischer-Tropsch (FT) wax from biomass to produce the jet fuel of sustainable aviation fuel has been one of the key reactions. -Heptadecane, which is one of the model diesel fractions produced from fat or FT wax, has hardly been used for hydrocracking of hydrocarbon for jet fuel production, while -hexadecane has often been used as one of the model compounds for this reaction. In the present study, a HY-zeolite (50 wt %, SiO/AlO = 100)-AlO (50 wt %) composite-supported Pt (0.

New theropod dinosaur from the Lower Cretaceous of Japan provides critical implications for the early evolution of ornithomimosaurs.

Ornithomimosauria consists of the ostrich-mimic dinosaurs, most of which showing cursorial adaptations, that often exhibit features indicative of herbivory. Recent discoveries have greatly improved our knowledge of their evolutionary history, including the divergence into Ornithomimidae and Deinocheiridae in the Early Cretaceous, but the early part of their history remains obscured because their fossil remains are scarce in the Aptian-Albian sediments. In recent years, many isolated ornithomimosaur remains have been recovered from the Aptian Kitadani Formation of Fukui, central Japan.